Travel advice

For an aging grandparent travelling alone to visit offspring on the other side of the world, there is only one piece of advice worth heeding (and it isn’t to be found on the official travel advisory sites). That advice is that:

whatever happens, you are never to panic.

Don’t panic, even if, on emerging from the stifling 2 hour torture of immigration processing in the Heathrow cattle-pens, you don’t recognise the long-haired, part-bearded Rasputin-look–alike, who says he’s your son.

He will be.

Don’t panic, even if, having successfully negotiated the train trip from Euston to the correct Birmingham station, you cannot find your daughter-in-law and grandchildren at the designated meeting-point and you cannot find a public phone and when you do, you cannot get it to work, and when it does, you find that your family are only a few metres away, but you still can’t find them.

Eventually you will.